Oops, They Did It Again

Romney and Perry square off. (click to see the glory of the GOP debate)

Can anyone explain to me why - four months before any balloting - we have to have a debate a week?  Isn't there a white girl missing somewhere in America to better occupy the cable news nets?

Anyway, they did it again.

Once again, there were too damned many people on the stage.  If someone can come up with a Death Panel for Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, I will nominate them for a Peabody Award.  Oh, and Gary Johnson.

There are only four candidates that should be up on that stage.

Mitt Romney - Candidate of the corporate and more or less sane wing of the GOP.  He's a phony, he's craven, he's a little creepy.  But he's turned into a polished candidate.  He's the only Republican who can plausibly beat Obama.

Rick Perry - Still the frontrunner.  He's said some dopey things and he's been a lackluster debater.  But his positions are the positions of the GOP electorate.

Michelle Bachmann - The Christianist.  Despite fading faster than a watercolor in the rain, Bachmann does two things.  First, her presence makes Santorum unnecessary.  She can represent the bigoted Christian demographic all by her self.  Second, she makes Perry look reasonable.

Ron Paul - Libertarian Jesus.  Paul is a sideshow to a sideshow, but he's got an intensely loyal core group of insane people followers.

Once again, the punditry all agree that Romney wiped the floor with Perry.  There is the usual nostrums about how no longer being the frontrunner has "freed up" the candidate to really go on the offensive.

But all of this ignores the two central facts of the GOP primary.  All rational evidence points to Romney.  But the GOP has give up on reason.  Romney's support is likely capped at between 25-35% of Republican voters.  Maybe under the old rules, that would be enough to win - like McCain did in 2008.  But outside of New England, I don't see strong support for Romney among the actual people who vote in GOP primaries.

Which leads me to the second central fact.  As the fringe candidates drop out, who are they going to throw their support behind?  Or rather, where are their followers going to go?  Perry has already sucked the life out of Bachmann's campaign.  When she goes, her followers (and Santorum's) move to Perry.  The Paultards will likely warm more to Perry's "Ponzi scheme" than to Romney's "Obamneycare".

Of course, circling back to my opening, it's way too early to determine who will actually win Iowa and South Carolina.

But that never stopped anybody from guessing.